Tag Archives: arthurian legend

Now amongst his other skills Arthur was a great slayer of Dragons and other monsters. Having rid Britain of such foul creatures he had been asked by Hoel. Duke of Brittany to help him, for Brittany at the time was at the time much cursed with these creatures. Now at a place called Lieue de Greve on the Breton coast there was a particular dragon that was extremely cunning and had resisted all efforts to kill it, or drive it away. It inhabited a great cavern that was so deep, that when it retired into its depths, always being sure to walk backwards in its own tracks, people were fooled into thinking the beast had fled. When Arthur came with a company of his companions to the cave this is just what happened. They camped outside the cave for several days but when there was no sight of the monster they assumed that it had disappeared. They camped some distance away and after many days of checking the cave and finding no sign of the beast they were thinking of leaving and heading back to Britain when one day they saw a sail on the horizon. They soon made out that it was a large coracle, or skin boat, such as had been known in north-west Europe for thousands of years and that it was heading for where they were. When the coracle sailed up directly onto the beach the crew stepped ashore led by a tall, powerful and graceful young man.They came up towards where Arthur and his men stood watching and the young man saluted Arthur saying,” Greetings, can you tell us where this is, My name is Efflam, son of the King of Erin and my companions and I have been driven off our course and have been a long time battling the winds and seas.”

About 18 miles north east of Perth lies the wee Strathmore village of Meigle. All too easily ignored by the traffic going to and from the North-east this little place contains real treasure for those interested in the ancient culture of Scotland.

The old school next to the kirk on the Dundee road has been made into a museum unlike any other. It contains a unique and beautiful collection of Pictish symbol stones most of which at one time stood in or near the kirkyard. The others are from the surrounding area. One of these stones has a legend about it that links it with one of the great European literary and mystical themes of all time — the story of Arthur and Guinevere.

The stone known as Vanora’s stone was at one time part of a group of symbol stones that stood in the adjoining kirkyard on what is known as Vanora’s Mound. The name Vanora is a variant of Guinevere and these stones are said to have formed a memorial on the grave of that faithless queen.

On the side of the stone bearing her name is a fine example of a Celtic cross and in the middle of the other side is a gowned figure being attacked by animals. The official guide book tells us that this is a representation of Daniel in the Lions’ Den but local legend, unconcerned with the need to explain everything in our past as being of Christian origin, tells us otherwise.

Arthur was perhaps originally a Celtic mythological figure who some people have suggested was already thousands of years old by the 6th century AD. He has been seen as representing a totemic figure of the Bear and associated with the Pole Star Ursa Major. What is indisputable is that he occupies a place among the p-Celtic peoples very like that of Finn Mac Coul among the Q-Celtic (Gaelic) speaking peoples of Scotlandd and Ireland. It is potentially this mythological Arthur that is referred to in place names all over southern Scotland, following the tradition of the legends being told in the locale of the audience.

Although the figure of King Arthur is known throughout the world it is little appreciated that the original stories about this great heroic figure seem to derive from that area of North Britain known since the ninth century as Scotland. Arthur is seen as in some way a typical English or Welsh figure while the scanty evidence of Arthur as a historical figure actually points to his northern origin. Just as the original mythological figure was that of a tribal hero, so the historic figure of the early sixth century was the leader of a war band rather than a king. The idea of the British king fighting off invaders from the Continent which is at the heart of most later developments of the Arthurian material is no longer sustainable in the light of modern scholarship. I put forward a different potential reason for Arthur’s twelve battles.